Snape had only been teaching for a year, but it already felt like a lifetime. Lily was gone, and though he hid it well, the grief gnawed at him daily. To make matters worse, the knowledge that she had passed because of the man he had once served haunted him relentlessly. He had to live with the shame of having been a Death Eater, and the weight of that guilt never lessened.

Adding to his frustration, Dumbledore still refused to let him teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. Did the headmaster not trust him? Did he believe Snape might revert to his old ways? It was infuriating and only deepened Severus' self-doubt.

By his third year at Hogwarts, a new staff member joined. He recognised them immediately—it had only been five years since they had sat two seats in front of him in the very same classrooms. They remembered him, too, and before long, his meals at the teacher’s table were shared with them. Over the months, those shared moments extended beyond meals to breaks between classes and quiet conversations after long days.

By his fifth year of teaching, they had become close friends—closer than he’d ever expected to let anyone get.

But one evening, everything changed.

A sudden attack on the school left the halls in chaos. In the frantic aftermath, Severus found his friend lying in a corridor, wounded. His breath caught in his throat as he knelt beside them, pressing his hands to their stomach, trying desperately to stop the draining.

"Stay with me," he whispered, his voice unsteady, the familiar guilt rising again. He couldn’t lose another person—not like this.

Severus pressed harder against the wound, his hands shaking as he muttered incantations, trying to heal them. His heart pounded in his chest, a rising panic that he hadn’t felt in years. Memories of Lily’s face flashed before his eyes—he couldn’t let that happen again, not to them.

"Hold on," he urged, voice thick with emotion, though he tried to keep it steady. "You’re not leaving me. Not like this."